258 The Poets and Nature. 



memories of that journey, and many touches of nature 

 remain on the mind the huge sea-lions in the Pacific below 

 the Cliff House at San Francisco, clambering on their rocks 

 of refuge, sprawling, scuffling, splashing; the owl-lands of 

 New Mexico, where bird and snake and ground-squirrel 

 live together ; the cities of the prairie dogs ; the bee-ranches ; 

 the leagues of yucca in full flower; the wonders of the 

 cactus. 



But above them ail stands out the firefly country of Texas 

 and Arkansas, where the land is all swamp, and the old hag- 

 gard trees, tapestried with ragged moss, wade ankle-deep in 

 brown stagnant water. The forest glades are long pools, 

 and wherever a vista opens there is a thin bayou stretching 

 away between aisles of sombre moss-ragged trunks. There 

 is a strange antediluvian gloom about the place this forest 

 standing in a lagoon. 



The world was something like this when the Deluge was 

 subsiding. Uttermost silence abides here ; except when a 

 turtle stirs in the mud, or a water-snake makes a ripple on 

 the dull pools. Sunlight ! Not a ray of light ever pierces to 

 the roots of the trees. But at sunset, when the orb goes 

 down rosy-red behind the water-logged trees, and their 

 trunks stand out black against the glaring sky, and the pools 

 about their feet take strange tints of copper and purpled 

 bronze what a sight it is ! 



The railway pierces an avenue straight as an arrow for 

 miles and miles through the belt of forest. On either side 

 along the track lie ditches filled with water. And at sunset 

 the ditches seem all filled with blood, and the sky seen 

 away in the distance underneath the trees hangs like a furious 

 crimson curtain. 



And as soon as the sun begins to set the awesome forest- 

 swamps awake, the sluggish waters lap and mumble upon 

 the snags as the creatures that live in them arouse them- 

 selves, and out from the rotten heaps comes the frog, and 



